Center no longer an option on NBA All-Star ballot

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This season, it really is going to be tough for Yao Ming to be voted an NBA All-Star starter.

Not only is Yao, long the darling of the fans’ vote, going into his second season of retirement, but the NBA eliminated the center designation on the All-Star ballot, grouping the centers with other frontcourt players.

The change removes the need to designate players such as Tim Duncan, Kevin Garnett and Chris Bosh by specific positions or to determine whether they should be listed by their best position or the position they actually play.

For years, Duncan played center but was identified as a power forward. In recent seasons, Bosh and Garnett, natural power forwards, have played at center.

Extinct like dinosaur
The change, however, also might reflect what Rockets coach Kevin McHale called “the sad state” of the position. He noted if there were a few more great centers, there would be a lot more traditional centers on rosters to go against them.

“They had all kinds of forwards out there,” McHale said. “I think it’s a sad state when you can’t (find) enough centers in our league anymore to fill up the roster. I don’t know if it’s a positionless game. If Moses Malone was playing right now and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Robert Parish, you’d have centers. I don’t know where they went.

They went the way of the dinosaur, I think.

“If you put LeBron James on Moses Malone, everyone would go, ‘What an interesting matchup.’ You do it for a while, and LeBron would come over and say, ‘You’ve got to take me off this guy.’ It’s just different. There’s just not a lot of them right now.”

Fans will choose two guards and three frontcourt players to start the 2013 NBA All-Star Game on Feb. 17 at Toyota Center.

In past seasons, fans chose a starting center, with coaches required to select a backup. Coaches also will vote for reserve frontcourt players without having to designate a center.

Nov. 13 release date
“The NBA’s competition committee and the league office agreed that having the center position as the only specific position singled out on the ballot was outdated and not representative of today’s game or players,” NBA executive vice president of basketball operations Stu Jackson said.

Ballots will be released Nov. 13 in Houston with 120 players selected by a media panel of NBA.com’s Steve Aschburner, the Toronto Star’s Doug Smith, TNT’s Kenny Smith and the Chronicle’s Jonathan Feigen.

Though the names on the ballot will not be released until next month, for the second consecutive season Yao will not be among them. But this time, he will not be the only center excluded.